Lock Issues INDICATE Much BIGGER Problems In Sliding Glass Doors

In this door example, we’re going to learn about how, what initially looks like a lock problem, actually showcases how the door system needs to work in harmony with itself. And when it doesn’t what happens.

For example, this lock here, it’s broken. It’s broken on the inside as well. And it’s because the people have been yanking on it. Because the wheels systems are degrading. Now I can tell that the wheel systems are degrading for two reasons. One it’s really hard to open the door, it doesn’t want to move much. But also if you look at the crack, I’ve left this crack, it’s a little hard to see but this crack is skinnier at the bottom than it is at the top.

It’s probably about, oh maybe a quarter of an inch fatter at the top than it is at the bottom. What that’s telling us is that the wheels are out of alignment. Which is partly what’s causing this lock issue. The lock isn’t working properly. They’re also having to yank too hard, which is what broke the handle. But I also want to show you on the far far left side of this door what’s actually happening. Over here if we take a look over here we’re going to see that this caulking that’s here, it’s a little bit hard to see but this caulking is actually coming away from the wall, ok. Now that should not be happening. This is to help the door stay weatherized. But it’s definitely pulling away from the wall system. What that’s telling us, is this nonmoving panel is being yanked in this direction every single time the door is closed by somebody who is staying in this unit.

That’s one of the reasons why their having such problems with the handle and the lock. Because this door now being crooked causes that panel over there to be out of alignment and it makes the lock challenged. The wheels on the other door, not working correctly because they have rust and corrosion would make opening and closing the door hard.

But when the door is already crooked, that door over there, it causes this door to be crooked, which causes this kind of a separation. And eventually what will happen is this door, even when the doors are both closed, this will howl in the wind. So you’re losing air conditioning and so forth. The other thing I noticed on this door system is that the screw system, let’s take a look at some of these screw systems. Here’s an example of the screw systems, they’re all rusted. Now we are right here on the gulf.

So we want to make sure when we’re working on a door system that we keep everything, as much as we can, with the stainless steel. Now this door does have a stainless steel track. I’ll show you that. It’s an older one, it’s called a cap track. And what we’ll probably do is replace it with a screw down track to give this door a little more strength. nAnd it is better that it is stainless, that’s probably what’s been helping this door be as functional as it is. But when we’re all done this thing will move a lot better, so we’ll take a look at that in a minute. So here’s this door now with the wheel taken out. Here’s kind of what’s left of what is the wheel and the rest of this stuff are parts and pieces of the wheel. We see a lot of this happening, this particular door doesn’t even move so it shouldn’t even have a wheel in it. And you see how it’s fattened this out and it’s actually created a hole. These kind of rusty, nasty looking corrosion pieces, that’s what happens when wheels are left in doors that don’t move often.

It really causes them to bridge the gap with corrosive elements and then it eats away the metal. So when we see this, we take these wheels out. And then we clean everything up and re-bolster this panel so it can’t move, with special kinds of brackets. And we get rid of all this horrible stuff here.

Here’s all the rest of the roller pieces from that wheel that we just pulled out. So as you can see this roller has been in there for a long time. nIt’s just been doing nothing because it’s a non operating door and never should have really been in there. But it was probably put in there by the original manufacturer. So we look for these types of problems when we’re out there working on a door because this can cause a door to be actually be eaten away to the point where you need to actually replace it.

Ok, so now here we are with the same door. Now it just moves real quiet, nice and smooth. It goes all the way over, it fully engages. It’s great. Open it back up and let’s take a look at what we did here down at the track. What we did is we put down a screw down track. This screw down track is made with stainless steel. It kind of caps over the existing track. And you can just see on the non operating track you know how corrosion and so forth builds up on it. And this stainless tracking system is going to make a huge difference on the operating door. We use stainless steel screws, you can see those over there. That’s going to help. And we put some caulking up underneath this track so we avoid the metal to metal touching.